Technical SEO Audit Checklist for 2017

It's 2017 and technical SEO is more alive than ever. It's truly the foundation for a well-optimized, and in turn well-ranking, website. So let's first give you a quick rundown of what a good SEO,
or SEO agency, would include on their technical SEO audit checklist. Granted, this initial list is not by any means complete. But these are certainly items that should be included in any audit.

Technical SEO Audit Checklist 2017

Missing title tag

Multiple title tags

Duplicate title tag

Title tag too long

Title tag too short

Missing meta description tag

Multiple meta description tags

Duplicate meta description tag

Meta description tag too long

Meta description tag too short

Missing H1 tag

Image missing alt attribute tag

Image size too large

Broken images

URL over 100 characters

Slow page load time

Broken or non-valid sitemap

Search engines blocked by robots.txt

Page blocked by meta robots tag

Page blocked by x-robots tag

Page nofollowed by x-robots tag

Hreflang tag issues

Page lacks OpenGraph meta tags

Page lacks Twitter meta tags

Prerender and prefetch tags

Mixed content error

Page lacks analytics tag

Meta refresh tag

Over 100 on-page internal links

Too many on-page external links

Overly dynamic URL

Duplicate page content

Thin page content

Low HTML to text ratio

Broken internal links

Broken external links

404 error

Redirect hop chain

Redirect to 4xx

30x redirect

Temporary redirect

5xx server error

Rel=canonical error

Multiple rel=canonical

How to Get Search Engines to Find, Crawl, and Index Your Website?

Through the use of automated bots, search engines, like Google, are able to find, crawl, and index your website. However, if your website is not paying attention to
technical SEO, you might be at risk of not performing well in organic search or, even worse, not being indexed at all. So what do you need to do?

Make sure that none of the pages you want to be indexed are blocked by meta robots tags.

Test your robots.txt file to ensure that it is not blocking any part of your website that you want to be indexed.

Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?

Over the past two years, Google has made a push for webmasters to improve the mobile-friendliness of their websites. Google even briefly included a notation on search engine result pages that
stated whether or not a particular page was "mobile-friendly." This has all been associated with a Google algorithm update that 's been referred to as "mobilegeddon" and
"mobilepocalyse" by various SEOs. So how can you check if your website is mobile-friendly?

Does Page Speed Have an Impact on SEO?

The simple answer is yes. Obviously. But why? Well, imagine that you visit a website, but it takes several seconds more than usual to load the page. Do you get impatient and leave? Most people
do, and therein lies the importance of ensuring that your website loads quickly. Additionally, Google and other search engines notice when visitors abandon your website quickly, due to slow page
load times. And as a result, they will impact how well you're able to rank. How can you make sure that your website page speed is optimized?

What Else Can You Do?

I hope I've made it clear how important a technical SEO audit is in 2017. Clearly, one of the most important aspects is making sure your website is being found, crawled, and indexed.
But also, mobile-friendliness and page speed are of crucial importance. But really, you shouldn't stop there. The main checklist above for a technical SEO audit should be your initial guide. But
if you're interested in professional assistance, be sure to contact the SEO Hero Agency today. Good luck!